28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great character emerges, November 20, 2006
The negative reviews are hard for me to figure out. It seems as though I read a different book from some of the reviewers. Ar maybe Amazon got their circuits screwed up. But I felt like I was reading an extraordinary novel about about two women caught up in their time. Anne Drayton emerges as the left wing purist, almost the anti-Holly-Golightly. Her friend/nemesis/mirror and narrator Georgette George diverges from her and yet they are both marked permanently by their time, the 1960s. The portrait of Georgette and her hardscrabble past is completely genuine and excellently developed.
The time of this novel was captured beautifully by Nunez, and it brought back memories I had nearly forgotten. Memories of New York City in the early 1960s, the great rift in the country at that time, the emergence of left wing children of the wealthy. I did not find that the writing was disjointed or that the fragments lacked unity. Especially since the novel spans several decades. It is not a perfect novel, if there is such a thing, but is certainly worthy of more stars than many of the reviewers have stingily doled out. This is a work of great quality and artistry, unlike so many novels that are sensationalized these days and which receive unwarranted accolades as a "good read" (a term that should be banned; whenever I hear someone say it was a good read, instead of a good book or novel, I hear them diminish the writing by commoditizing it, focused only on whether the book pleases them, like some performing dog; it becomes all about the reader and the obsessive need to be reassured; Faulkner or Garcia Marquez or Proust would Not be "good reads")
Anyway, I think this book is one of the best books of 06.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
High expectations, poor execution, February 12, 2007
This review is from: The Last of Her Kind: A Novel (Paperback)
I think that Ms. Nunez bit off more than she could chew with this novel.
I really like the premis of the story - college roommates become best friends, and the more ambitious one in many way shapes the other. I was looking forward to the inevitable split between the two and how they'd find their way back to each other. But sadly, despite the length, I don't feel that these two characters ever really materialized. You find out precious little about the narrator. She has two bad marriages, and you don't really find out why she felt she would never find true love again after her affair with Ann's father. Her relationship with her children was never fleshed out, and you had no idea what she wanted out of life (other than envying a marriage and having a child of an early boss). As far as Ann, you learned everything about her really quickly, and then were told it, over and over and over again. Her political views and beliefs were in the forefront again and again. I can understand why some reviewers think that Ms. Nunez was just spilling out her political agenda from the Vietnam era. I'm not sure I can agree, but I sure didn't feel bad about being a materialistic person after reading this. Ann was not made very sympathetic. Until the affair with the father happens towards the end, you don't learn anything new, and then, you only learn a few antecdotes about her childhood that helped shape her. The book concludes with a long narrative from a friend of her's from prison. Even in this, you don't learn much about her. She's a tragic figure, not just because she's misguided in her efforts, but because Ann never developed after she turned 17.
The writing I found very disjointed. I did not particularly care for the long rambling section in the middle about the narrator's sister, with a SEVERAL page rambling love letter to Mick Jagger stuck in the middle. On its own, the story between the sisters from a bad home could have been beautiful. But sandwiched in between the relationship with Ann, it just took away from the opportunity to learn more about the protagonist. And the reconciliation between the two friends was contrived and wasn't worth having to learn so much about a sister that in the end was treated as an after thought.
Finally, I must comment on the letter from the "prisoner" at the end. Ms. Nunez is simply not a skillful enough author to pull off two different first person narrations in the same book. If one was to thumb through the book and read a random passage from the prisoner, it is only the setting of the letter that differentiates it from Georgette George. The voice of these two women were identical, rambling tones, word usage, etc. If this was the author's intent, it was totally lost on me. It just struck me as amateurish.
All in all, if you are looking for a book about friendship or even about college life in the late 1960s, I'd keep looking.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent, July 14, 2007
This review is from: The Last of Her Kind: A Novel (Paperback)
The best novel I've read in 2007. Style, story, depth, character development, texture, humor and voice, all just great. I recommend this book for anyone who has lived those times or wants to get a personal feel what the 60's/70's were all about. Ms. Nunez has the gift of making the reader feel like it's just you and her in the room, and nothing else matters. I finished it in two days and immediately loaned it out to my circle.
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